About three weeks ago, I spent a weekend at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel for the annual Harvard Model United Nations conference. On Saturday night, I was very tired and decided to head back to my room at Harvard. I got into a nondescript cab in front of the hotel. The cab driver charged me 50 cents for putting my bags in the trunk.

When we arrived at Harvard, my friend, who was in the cab with me, paid the driver, and we all got out. A split second later the driver pulled away with my bags in the trunk! I was stunned. It took me a minute to realize that all my schoolbooks were in there, not to mention expensive clothes.

I panicked and raced up to my room to search the yellow pages for all the cab companies in Boston. I called every company. Not one of them had in their fleet a solid, dark-colored cab like the one that had taken us back to Harvard.

Then I called the police, who informed me about independent cab companies. These companies can be one-person operations. They are unlisted in the phone book. And unless you have the license plate number of the cab, the police can do nothing to help you if something goes wrong.

I waited patiently for more than a week. I called the police every day. But no luck. This unidentifiable cab driver stole about $1,000 worth of my stuff. For a poor college student, the situation was devastating. It required me to buy new books, photocopy notes from friends, and attempt the long process of calling doctors to refill prescriptions--not to mention the fact that I also had to call my parents so they could notify the insurance company.

So is it worth it to get into a privately-owned cab just to get home and get some sleep? I wouldn't recommend it.

Erika R. Janes '00 is a government concentrator in Cabot House.